Parker Ranch, September 2.
Judging from even our sketchy view of the Parker Ranch, it is reason in itself for a future visit to Hawaii. The glorious country, with its invaluable assets, is handled with all the precision of a great corporation. Through the courtesy of Mr. Thurston, we are enjoying the hospitality of the manager, Mr. Alfred W. Carter, and his wife, who dwell in the roomy house of Thelma, now abroad. In our short horseback ride we saw a few of the fine thoroughbred horses which are raised, one of the imported stallions being a son of Royal Flush II. Royal Flush II lives and moves and pursues his golden-chestnut being on the ranch of Rudolph Spreckles, adjoining our own on Sonoma Mountain.
Louisson Brothers’ Coffee Plantation, Honokaa District, Hawaii, September 5.
Our next lap was to Honokaa, where we were met by another carriage. The day’s trip demonstrated a still better realization that the big island comprises nearly two-thirds of the 6700 square miles of the eight inhabited islands; as well as the copiously watered fertility of this windward coast. Leaving Waimea, we continued across the rolling green plains, whose indefinite borders were lost in Mauna Kea’s misty foothills. Rain fell soothingly, and often we had glimpses of fierce-looking, curly-headed Scotch bulls with white faces, vignetted in breaking Scotch mist into the veriest details of old steel engravings. Hawaiian cowboys, taking form in the cottony vaporousness, waved and called to our coachman ere swallowed again.
One cannot encompass Hawaii without stepping upon the feet of one lordly mountain or another. If it is not the exalted Mauna Kea, it is surely the hardly less lofty Mauna Loa, or Hualalai.
At any moment in these Islands one may look off to the sea, whether calm or blue-flushed; or, as here, deep-blue and white-whipped, driven like a mighty river by the strong and steady trade wind. One never grows fully accustomed to the startling height of the horizon, which seems always above eye-level, cradling one’s senses in a vast blue bowl.
At last the road dipped seaward to the bluffs where lies red-roofed, tree-sheltered Honokaa, headquarters of a great sugar plantation. After luncheon at the little hotel, we set out upon the almost unbroken climb of several miles to Louissons’ coffee plantation, where we had been invited by these two indefatigable brothers. Never have I met but one man who could surpass in perpetual motion our dear and earnest friend Alexander Hume Ford, and that man is “Abe” Louisson, who, body and eye and brain, seems animated by a galvanic battery.
It was a waving, shimmering land of incalculable proportions through which we ascended, of green so fair that there is no other green like it—the fabulous sugar-cane so closely standing that it responds to all moods of the capricious sky, like the pale-green surfaces of mountain lakes; cane that on the one hand surges out of sight into the mountain clouds, and on the other floods its fair green clear to the sudden red verge of cliffs sheering into the blue, high-breasting Pacific. And every way we turned, there were the sweat-shining, swart foreigners, Japanese, Portuguese, and what not, in blue-denim livery of labor, directed by mounted khaki-gaitered lunas (overseers), white or Hawaiian, or both, under broad sombreros.
We had not been in the high-basemented cottage half an hour, when the driven enthusiasm of Mr. “Abe” had us out again and among the magnificent coffee plants; and we learned that a coffee plantation can be one of the prettiest places under heaven, with its polished dark-green foliage, head-high and over, crowded with red jewels of berries, interspersed by an imported shade tree which he calls the grevillea. This tree serves the dual purpose of shading the plants—which are kept resolutely trimmed to convenient height—and of fertilizing with its leaves the damp ground under the thick shrubbery. Nowhere have we seen such luxuriant growth of coffee, and the café noir was unequaled save for a magic brew we had once drunk in the mountains of Jamaica.
We were making very jolly over dessert and the thick, black coffee, when the house seemed seized in an angry grasp and shaken like a gigantic rat. I never did like earthquakes, and the April eighteenth disaster which I saw through in California has not strengthened my nerve. Jack, with expectant face, remained in his seat; but I, as the violence augmented, stood up and reached for his hand, vaguely wondering why every one did not run for the outside. The frame building seemed yielding as a basket—purposely erected that way. At the beginning of the tremor, the cook and his kokua had come quietly into the room and held the lamps; and when the second shock was heard grinding through the mountain Mr. Abe, wishing us to have the full benefit of the harmless volcanic diversion, rose dramatically, black eyes burning and arms waving, and cried: